The Academy Awards are upon us once again. It’s easy to be cynical about the Oscars, whether it’s because your favourite films never win or because of the endless campaigning, or because it’s, or because of the whole “rich people giving each other statues” thing, but I still kinda like them.

This year the nominees are mostly good, so here they all are along with some thoughts, opinions, and a prediction or two.

2016 was a good year for film, and anyone who tells you different didn’t see very many films. I’ve already posted my best films of 2016, but there were plenty more films that didn’t make my best of list that you should definitely make the time to see.

So then, let’s take a look at the not-quite best of 2016, presented here in alphabetical order.

2016 has been conspicuous by our absence. It’s been a hell of a year, one with many ups and many many downs. It’d be easy to say that the downs of 2016 were to blame for the lack of writing here, that the year was just so shit that I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s definitely not the case though as for me personally it’s actually been a pretty great year. It’s the good stuff that has kept me from writing.

I don’t even know where to start with the cultural icons we’ve lost this year. I can’t eulogize them all and even if I did, what more could I say? I could tell you the stories of why Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher are equally important in my headcannon (and I might yet) but in the end it just hasn’t felt like my place.

One thing I can tell you about this year though is that despite all the shit it has been a great year for cinema. So much so that when it came time to figure out my top ten films of the year I couldn’t get the list lower than 12 (and I narrowed it from nearly twice that number).

So, in an effort to get going again, let’s close out this year with the 12 best movies of the year according to yours truly. These are presented in no particular order, except for the two that truly stand out as the best of the year.

2015 was a good year! I already told you my ten favourite films from 2015 but those ten were hard to choose. My first pass over the list of movies I saw resulted in 25 candidates for the top ten, 15 of which were ultimately cut. So rather than make a worst of list like I have in previous years (Pixels was the worst film of last year, no others need be mentioned) I’d rather tell you about ten more you totally should see. So let’s do that.

It’s been a good year for film. There’s not really any other way to say it. I saw 60 odd films this year, far fewer in theatres but far more at home than last year, and of those I remember the majority being good!

There are a whole bunch of movies I haven’t seen yet: Anomalisa, Duke of Burgundy, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Carol, Son of Saul, Bridge of Spies, The Look of Silence, Green Room, and so many others. Bone Tomahawk, one I’ve been particularly looking forward to, isn’t even out in Canada yet.

Films that are fantastic but didn’t quite mke the list include Trainwreck, Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Brooklyn, It Follows, The Martian, The Hateful 8 and (again) so many others. In the end it was tough to narrow it down to just ten films because while it was way to choose my top three, choosing only seven more proved pretty tough. There were a lot of great movies in 2015.

For the last several years I’ve also put together a worst-of list but this year I decided not to do that. I know some people look forward to it but I’ve decided to focus on the positive rather than the negative despite the latter being the bigger draw on the web. And besides, we all know that Pixels was the worst film of the year by a country mile.